The long sentence shows that "money laundering through the use of virtual currencies is still money laundering, and that online crime is still crime," Leslie Caldwell, assistant attorney general for the U.S. Department of Justice's Criminal Division, said in a press release.

Liberty Reserve, launched in 2006 in Costa Rica, billed itself as the Internet's "largest payment processor and money transfer system” and allowed people all over the world to send and receive payments using virtual currency, according to an indictment. The DOJ accused Budovsky of being aware that the digital currencies were used by online criminals.

In May 2013, when government investigators shut the company down, Liberty Reserve had more than 5.5 million user accounts and had processed more than 78 million financial transactions, with a total value of more than $8 billion. The largest group were U.S. users, with about 600,000 accounts, who generated between $1 billion and $1.8 billion of the transactions, the DOJ said.

Four co-defendants, Vladimir Kats, Azzeddine El Amine, Mark Marmilev and Maxim Chukharev, have already pleaded guilty in the long-running investigation. Marmilev and Chukharev were sentenced to five years and three years in prison, respectively. Cote is expected to sentence Kats and El Amine this week.

Charges are pending against Liberty Reserve and two individual defendants who are fugitives.